1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to integrated circuit products and, more particularly, to removable peripheral cards that contain one or more integrated circuits.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the trend for memory integrated circuit (IC) packages to be smaller and their memory density to be larger continues, advancements in packaging integrated circuits are needed. One recent advancement involves stacking multiple integrated circuit dies within a single IC package. Such internal package stacking involves stacking a smaller die on a larger die. Each of the dies is wire bonded to a substrate. This type of stacking has, for example, been used with same function dies (e.g., two Flash memory dies) or different function dies (e.g., one Flash memory die and one SRAM die). Additionally, stacking of two or three dies has been done for stacked Chip Scale Packages (stacked CSP) and stacked Thin Small Outline Packages (TSOP).
Memory cards are commonly used to store digital data for use with various products (e.g., electronic products). These memory cards are increasingly called on to store greater and greater amounts of data. Memory cards normally provide non-volatile data storage, and thus such memory cards are very popular and useful because they retain data even after being powered-off. Examples of memory cards are Flash cards that use Flash type or EEPROM type memory cells to store the data. Flash cards have a relatively small form factor and have been used to store digital data for products such as cameras, computers (hand-held, notebook and desktop computers), set-top boxes, hand-held or other small audio players/recorders (e.g., MP3 devices), and medical monitors. A major supplier of Flash cards is SanDisk Corporation of Sunnyvale, Calif.
Unfortunately, the manufacturing of high density memory cards having a relatively small form factor is complicated. One complication is that the final form factor of memory cards is irregular, namely, not rectangular. The irregular form factor can serve various purposes, such as restricting its connection to a connector or port in a particular orientation, providing a position reference or a lock position, etc. However, integrated circuit assemblies conventionally have a regular, namely, a rectangular, shape and also have to be protected from users. Thus, conventionally, memory cards have an irregular form factor defined by a lid, frame or outer package that encompasses the regular shape of the integrated circuit assemblies. The lid, frame or outer package is often made of plastic. A further problem with the irregular form factor is that the assembly of the lid, frame or outer package about the integrated circuit assembly is not a semiconductor manufacturing process and thus must be done in a separate production line, in perhaps a different manufacturing facility.
Thus, there is a need for improved approaches to manufacture memory cards having small form factors.